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Hierarchies  of  creative  interaction  –  the  political  aspects  of  collaboration  between  composer  and  improvising  musicians  in  Against  Oblivion,  Part  3    By  Jeremy  Peyton  Jones  for  the  CONFERENCE:  COMPOSITIONAL  AESTHETICS  AND  THE  POLITICAL,  20-‐22  Feb  2015      Last  year  I  undertook  a  residency  at  the  Cantieri  Culturali  alla  Zisa  in  Palermo,  Sicily  and  made  a  new  piece  of  work  in  collaboration  with  the  Sicilian  Improvisers  Orchestra,  a  group  of  improvising  musicians  based  in  Palermo.  We  rehearsed  over  a  period  of  4  weeks  and  presented  two  public  performances  of  the  piece  “Against  Oblivion  Part  3”,  first  at  the  Cantieri  and  then  at  the  Teatro  Garibaldi  in  the  city.    Working  with  improvising  musicians  is  something  I  don’t  normally  do  –  in  fact  in  all  my  composition  of  the  last  30  years,  except  for  a  recent  project  called  Endings  in  2013  in  which  I  collaborated  with  the  improvising  electronic  composer  Kaffe  Matthews,  I  had  consciously  avoided  all  but  the  smallest  amount  of  improvisation  in  my  work.  However  I’d  come  to  realize  that  this  had  cut  me  off  from  a  whole  area  of  potentially  fruitful  creative  practice.  And  so  I  had  become  very  keen  to  work  with  a  group  specialising  in  improvisation.  

 Today  I  want  to  consider  two  hierarchies:  the  relationship  between  myself  as  composer  and  the  musicians,  and  from  that,  the  hierarchies  inherent  in  various  forms  of  improvisatory  practice,  and  the  hierarchies  of  musical  style  and  genre.    The  SIO  is  a  collective  of  professional  musicians  based  in  Palermo,  and  for  the  purposes  of  this  consideration  of  their  roles,  and  the  focus  on  those  actually  involved  in  the  devising  and  performance  of  the  piece,  it  is  worth  introducing  the  11  members  who  participated  in  this  project:    

     Beppe  Viola  –  reeds   Tiziana  Maionica  –  voice  

Benedetto  Basile  –  flute  Eva  Geraci  –  flute  

Marcello  Cina  –  tenor  sax  

Alessandra  Pipitone  –  piano  Lelio  Giannetto  -‐  bass  

 

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     Mezz  Gacano  –  el.  guitar  Giuseppe  Greco  -‐  guitar  

Gandolfo  Pagano  –  prepared  guitar  

Alessandro  Librio  -‐  violin  

   The  fact  that  this  project  also  involved  a  British  composer  of  mainly  non-‐improvised  music  (who  speaks  little  Italian)  travelling  to  a  very  different  part  of  Europe  to  collaborate  with  these  musicians  is  also  significant.  I  was  something  of  an  outsider  both  culturally  and  musically  and  I  felt  somewhat  apprehensive  about  how  our  working  relationship  would  develop.  I  didn’t  want  to  impose  myself  and  my  way  of  working  on  them  and  at  the  same  time  I  wanted  us  to  be  able  to  work  fruitfully  together  to  create  something  unique  and  distinctive.    It  was  also  significant  that  when  I  started  working  with  them  the  orchestra  had  just  finished  a  project  focusing  on  the  music  and  ideology  of  the  legendary  jazz  saxophonist/composer  Albert  Ayler  called  la  Musica  e  La  Rivolta.    That  experience  for  the  players,  and  for  me  on  seeing  their  performances  had  an  effect  on  the  way  we  worked  together.  I  very  much  appreciate  Ayler’s  combination  of  lyricism  and  riotousness  and  was  struck  by  the  way  the  players  interpreted  the  material.    Clearly  in  many  areas  of  collective  musical  and  performing  arts  practice,  hierarchies  exist  either  implicitly  or  explicitly,  in  the  relationships  of  those  involved.    Some  of  these  are  clearly  defined:    conductor  and  orchestra  members;  musical  director  and  band;  director  and  actors;  choreographer  and  dancers.      In  devised  work,  involving  the  creative  input  of  the  performers,  such  hierarchies  are  also  often  still  explicit,  involving  a  distinction  between  the  creative  team  (composer/choreographer/director)  and  the  performers.    With  improvised  music  these  hierarchies  may  be  less  obvious  and  indeed  many  musicians  are  drawn  to  this  way  of  working  specifically  because  they  wish  to  work  more  collectively,  expressing  a  desire  to  avoid  the  ‘tyranny’  of  the  score  and  the  ‘tyranny’  of  being  directed.      Before  going  to  Sicily  I  re-‐read  Derek  Bailey’s  book  Improvisation  Its  nature  and  Practice  in  Music  in  which  his  antipathy  to  the  score,  and  the  notion  of  being  directed,  comes  across  very  clearly.  Besides  Bailey’s  comments  such  as  ‘the  stranglehold  of  notation’    I  was  struck  by  a  couple  of  quotes,  one  from  John  Zorn:    

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“I  was  really  fascinated  with….finding  a  way  to  harness  these  improvisers’  talents  in  a  compositional  framework  without  actually  hindering  what  they  did  best  –  which  is  improvising”    This  tallied  with  my  own  aims:  instead  of  asking  players  to  perform  fixed  pre-‐determined  pieces,  I  wanted  to  draw  on  their  skill  and  creativity  to  produce  something  far  richer  and  more  varied  than  I  could  conceive  or  produce  on  my  own.  What  I  wasn’t  so  clear  about  was  Zorn’s  assertion  which  followed:    “An  improviser  wants  to  have  the  freedom  to  do  anything  at  any  time.  For  a  composer  to  give  an  improviser  a  piece  of  music  which  said  ‘play  these  melodies  –  then  improvise  –  then  play  with  this  guy  –  then  improvise  –  then  play  this  figure  –  then  improvise’  to  me  that  was  defeating  the  purpose  of  what  these  people  had  developed,  which  was  a  very  particular  way  of  relating  to  their  instruments  and  to  each  other”      I  was  also  struck  by  the  comment  by  Evan  Parker  about  scores:    Leaving  aside  the  score  as  the  embodiment  of  an  ideal  performance,  a  score  can  also  be  considered  a  recipe  for  possible  performance.    Unlike  Zorn  I  particularly  wanted  to  combine  improvisation  with  pre-‐composed  fixed  material  –  I  felt  this  would  give  the  piece  a  far  more  identifiable  and  concrete  dramaturgical  structure  and  be  potentially  more  communicative  for  the  audience  than  an  equivalent  period  of  largely  free  improvisation.  I  also  liked  Evan  Parker’s  notion  of  a  kind  of  halfway  house  where,  like  many  indeterminate  pieces,  the  score  allows  for  an  amount  of  freedom  of  interpretation.    At  the  start  of  rehearsals  I  had  several  sections  of  music  planned  -‐  some  involving  free  improvisation,  some  involving  performer  choice  and  ‘possible’  interpretations  of  a  score,  some  involving  improvisation  over  pre-‐existing  material,  but  also  some  fully  scored  for  the  ensemble,  with  the  notion  that  we  would  explore  all  this  material  in  rehearsal  and  between  us  devise  an  overall  structure  for  the  finished  piece.    I  was  mindful  of  Zorn’s  assertions  and  was  fully  aware  of  the  hostility  of  many  improvisers  to  the  score  and  the  “stranglehold  of  notation”  as  Derek  Bailey  had  so  eloquently  put  it,  so  didn’t  know  how  the  players  would  take  to  the  more  structured  material  and  was  particularly  nervous  about  the  fully  scored  sections,  not  knowing  how  open  or  hostile  the  players  would  be  to  this.      What  I  experienced  was  that  we  engaged  in  a  kind  of  dance,  negotiating  different  levels  of  improvisation  vs  score  reading  from  section  to  section,  but  that  creatively  all  seemed  happy  with  including  the  whole  range,  from  fully  improvised  to  fully  scored.  In  the  event  we  used  very  little  completely  free  improvisation.  We  tried  it,  and  I  had  assumed  that  because  the  players  knew  each  other  and  already  had  this  as  the  main  focus  of  their  work  that  they  would  think  it  important  to  include  at  least  some  of  this  complete  freedom  for  themselves.  It  turned  out  in  rehearsal  that  they  felt  the  freely  improvised  sections  worked  better  when  directed.  At  first  I  felt  they  might  be  deferring  to  me  as  the  creative  instigator  of  the  piece,  but  I  think  it  was  more  pragmatic  than  that  –  with  a  small  group  of  three  or  four  improvisers  it’s  perfectly  possible  (and  probably  preferable)  to  allow  the  performers  to  interact  freely,  but  with  11  

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players  the  material  can  simply  become  too  dense  and  amorphous  in  its  shaping  if  no  structure  is  imposed,  either  through  pre-‐arranged  plan  or  through  live  direction.      I  want  to  play  you  come  examples  from  the  live  performance,  but  before  that  I’ll  give  a  bit  of  background  to  Against  Oblivion:    This  piece  is  the  third  part  of  an  ongoing  series  of  music/theatre  productions  all  called  Against  Oblivion.  Each  part  of  this  series  is  self-‐contained  and  represents  a  new,  separate  and  independent  output  of  my  research.  The  research  element  focuses  on  the  role  of  narrative  in  music-‐based  theatre  especially  regarding  the  move  away  from  naturalistic  narrative  in  favour  of  an  equal  expression  through  physical  action,  image,  sound,  text  etc,  and  new  collaborative  devising  processes  as  an  effective  alternative  to  conventional  roles  played  by  composer,  director,  choreographer  and  performer.    The  subject  matter  of  the  series  as  a  whole  concerns  the  importance  of  memory,  either  as  a  facet  of  our  cultural  legacy,  or  as  a  vital  necessity  in  the  face  of  the  extremes  of  human  experience.  Part  1  (made  in  2007),  concerned  the  legacy  of  violence  and  conflict,  Part  2  (made  in  2009)  concerned  a  more  personal  contemplation  of  our  individual  legacies  with  references  to  celebrity  culture  pitching  its  vacuous  extremes  alongside  allusions  to  the  genuinely  creative  and  pioneering.  Part  3  is  about  the  legacy  of  music  itself,  in  particular  Western  art  music  of  the  20th  century,  and  through  this,  about  a  consideration  of  what  music  is  and  what  it  can  be  (which  I  felt  had  been  very  significant  questions  for  20th  C  composers).  I’ve  always  loved  Berio’s  Sinfonia  and  had  an  idea  of  doing  something  which  acknowledged  the  music  of  the  20th  century  in  a  similar  way  in  which  Sinfonia  includes  a  homage  to,  and  acknowledgement  of  the  music  of  the  19th.    In  its  extensive  quotation  and  re-‐  presentation  of  Mahler,  Sinfonia  also  presents  a  powerful  challenge  to  musical  hierarchies  –  the  status  of  the  masterwork  and  the  notion  that  such  things  are  not  to  be  tampered  with  or  defiled.    In  Sinfonia,  Berio  made  a  tribute  to  the  music  of  Mahler  whose  work,  as  Berio  put  it  in  1968  ‘seems  to  bear  the  weight  of  the  entire  history  of  music  of  the  last  two  centuries’.  In  the  3rd  movement,  the  Scherzo  from  Mahler’s  2nd  Symphony  runs  through  the  work  ‘like  a  river  flowing  through  a  constantly  changing  landscape’.  There  are  parallels  with  my  approach  in  Against  Oblivion  Part  3.  For  Berio  the  Mahler  movement  is  treated  ‘like  a  generator  -‐  and  also  as  a  container  -‐  within  whose  framework  a  large  number  of  musical  characters  and  references  is  proliferated’.    So  Against  Oblivion  3  looks  back  at  the  ideas  and  music  of  the  20th  Century  and  the  legacy  this  has  left  for  composers,  musicians  and  audiences  today.  As  well  as  improvisation  there’s  a  lot  of  sampling,  quotation,  reworking  and  rescoring  of  pre-‐composed  music,  as  well  as  spoken  texts  in  English  or  in  Italian  translation,  from  several  sources  about  what  music  is  and  what  it  can  be.  These  draw  in  particular  on  the  music  of  Webern  and  the  ideas  of  John  Cage  (who,  as  did  Mahler  for  Berio,  between  them  represent  to  me  two  composers  who  ‘bear  the  weight’  of  20th  Century  western  music),  but  also  the  music  of  Hanns  Eisler,  Igor  Stravinsky,  Bela  Bartok,  and  Morton  Feldman.  Into  this  mix  is  also  thrown  music  based  on  material  by  Purcell,  and  an  anonymous  13th-‐century  French  motet.  This  inclusion  and  re-‐presentation  of  such  a  wide  range  of  musical  styles  was  an  important  aspect  of  the  piece  as  a  whole.    

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The  Cage  texts  are  all  writings  from  Silence  and  concern  what  music  can  be  and  how  we  perceive  it.  I  purposefully  wanted  to  combine  these  ideas  with  music  which  incorporated  a  mixture  of  noise,  extended  instrumental  techniques  and  more  conventional  harmonic  and  melodic  structures.      Before  we  listen  to  the  examples  here’s  a  list  the  Types  of  Improvisation  used    in  the  piece:    

1. Free  improvisation  -‐  completely  ad  lib,  of  an  approximate  time  length  ended  by  a  prearranged  signal  to  move  to  the  next  section.  

2. Directed  free  improvisation  –  directed  only  in  terms  of  which  instruments  are  to  play  and/or  remain  silent  –  otherwise  entirely  free  

3. idiomatic  improvisation  over  fixed  material  –  with  pre-‐arranged  agreement  as  to  which  instruments  should  improvise  when  

4. non-‐idiomatic  improvisation  over  fixed  material  –  ditto  NB  idiomatic  and  non-‐idiomatic  are  the  terms  used  by  Bailey,  alternative  terms  might  be  structured  or  non-‐structured,  or  as  Beppe  Viola  put  it  improvising  ‘inside’  the  material  or  ‘outside’  it  

5. Indeterminacy  involving  improvisation  where  the  score  allows  for  performer  choice  and  includes  instruction  to  improvise  on  certain  given  material    As  I’ve  made  clear  we  did  not  start  this  devised  collaboration  from  a  completely  clean  slate  –  starting  to  create  a  piece  collectively  from  scratch  –  it  would  of  course  have  been  very  different  if  we  had.  I  came  up  with  the  concept  and  much  of  the  pre-‐composed  material.  However  it’s  very  obvious  that  the  improvised  elements  are  a  major  part  of  the  finished  work  and  the  creative  input  of  the  performers  transformed  it  completely  beyond  anything  I  could  have  created  on  my  own.      In  all  the  directions  given  to  them  I  didn’t  mind  how  freely  they  were  interpreted.  More  to  the  point  I  didn’t  think  it  was  my  place  to  mind..      I’d  like  to  play  you  three  examples  from  the  performance:  

1. directed  free  improv    leading  into  scored  section  (Eisler  chords  from  Über  den  Selbstmord  –  about  the  suicide),  with  speech  then  idiomatic  improvisation  (Tutti-‐Tutti  furioso  into  Eisler  2)  “Is  it  high?  Is  it  low?  Is  it  in  the  middle?  Is  it  soft?  Is  it  loud?  Etc  from  Silence  Composition  as  Process  III  Communication.  John  Cage  'I  begin  to  hear  the  old  sounds  -‐  the  ones  I  had  thought  worn  out,  worn  out  by  intellectualization  -‐  I  begin  to  hear  the  old  sounds  as  though  they  are  not  worn  out.  Silence,  like  music,  is  non-‐existent.  There  are  always  sounds.  That  is  to  say  if  one  is  alive  to  hear  them.  Obviously  they  are  not.  Whether  I  make  them  or  not  there  are  always  sounds  to  be  heard  and  all  of  them  are  excellent.”  John  Cage    

2. Indeterminate  score  or  open  score:  Webern  (Bagatelle)  treatment  of  material  from  Bagatelles  for  String  Quartet  No  1  with  samples  from  Webern      

3. Idiomatic  and  non-‐idiomatic  improve  over  fixed  material:  Je  Languis  13th  Century  French  chanson  Je  Languis-‐Pucelete-‐Domino  

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BAGATELLES(

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(

Choose(four(or(five(of(the(fragments(which(are(playable(on(your(instrument.(If(possible(play(at(

the(given(pitch,(but(otherwise(fragments(can(be(transposed(by(I(octave.(

(

Play(these(chosen(fragments(in(any(order,(and(with(as(many(repe@@ons(as(you(like.(Play(at(

the(given(tempo(but(start(when(you(choose.(At(first(play(each(fragment(matching(the(nota@on(

as(closely(as(possible,(and(carefully(observing(the(ar@cula@on,(dynamic(and(expression(

marks*.(Play(with(great(aLen@on(to(detail(and(with(delicate(expressivity.(

(

Once(you(become(familiar(with(the(fragments(start(to(vary(them,(crea@ng(subtle(changes(or(

elabora@ons(as(you(feel(appropriate.(

(

On(a(given(signal,(play(two(more(fragments(in(your(own(@me,(then(stop(playing.(

(

Always(listen(carefully(to(the(other(players.(Perform(as(an(ensemble(

(

NOTES:(

If(the(indica@on(is(not(performable(on(your(instrument,(play(in(a(manner(which(matches(the(

given(@mbre/ar@cula@on(as(closely(as(possible.(

Harmonics(are(to(be(played(as(a(harmonic(if(possible,(otherwise(straight.((The(sounding(pitch(

is(given(in(brackets)(

The(sampler(plays(suitable(sampled(recording(of(a(Webern(work((B2(=(at(pitch,(B3(=(at(

octave)(

7

 

1

BAGATELLES

Jeremy Peyton Jones (after Anton Webern)

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